Let us try to describe the last musical party at which we assisted. A scramble amid piles of unbound music; the right cahier found, snatched up, and opened at the well-thumbed solo with which she has already contended for many a long hour, and now hopes to execute for our applause. Alas! the piano sounds as if it had the pip; the paralytic keys halt, and stammer, and tremble, or else run into each other like ink upon blotting paper, and the pedals are the only part of the instrument which do the work for which they were intended. We should be sorry that our favourite dog had his paw between them and the lady's slipper. The dust which succeeds the concerto proves satisfactorily that it is possible to be frisky without being lively; its vulgarity is so pronounced that it offends you like low conversation. Another concerto follows—ten folio pages! whew!!——Oh, ye ebony and ivory devils! oh, for an exorcist to put you to flight! Cramped fingers are crossing each other at a great rate; we really tremble for the glue, and the pegs, and the wires, and the whole economy of the instrument, at that critical juncture when the performers arrive at a piece of mysterious notation, where a great many tadpole-looking figures are huddled together under a black rainbow. At such a "passage" as this, it seems one would think the house were on fire, and no time to be lost; the black mittens and the white now Rob-Royishly invade each other's territory; each snatches up something and carries it off, like the old marauders of the Border country; and reprisals are made, and lines of discord and dissonance are establishing, which require the police, the magistrate, and the riot act. Bravo! bravo! bravo! and the battle ceases, and the babble commences. Place for the foreign train, the performers par métier! Full of confidence are they; amidst all their smiles and obsequiousness, there is a business air about the thing. As soon as the pianist has asked the piano how it finds itself, and the piano has intimated that it is pretty well, but somewhat out of tune, a collateral fiddler and a violoncello brace up their respective nerves, compare notes, and when their drawlings and crookings are in unison, a third piece of music of indefinite duration, and as it seems to us all about nothing, begins. Our violinist is evidently not long come out, and has little to recommend him—he employs but a second-rate tailor, wears no collar, dirty mustaches, and a tight coat; he is ill at ease, poor man, wincing, pulling down his coat-sleeves, or pulling up his braces over their respective shoulders. His strings soon become moist with the finger dew of exertion and trepidation; his bow draws out nothing but groans or squeals; and so, in order to correct these visceral complaints, a piece of rosin is awkwardly produced from his trousers' pocket, and applied to the rheumatic member, with some half-dozen brisk rubs in a parenthesis of music. The effect is painfully ludicrous!——
I am sleepy, sleepy, begins the piano! Sleepy, sleepy, mews Mr Violin—very, very, very sleepy, dron
es the drowsy four-stringed leviathan. Oh, do try if you can't say something, something, something to enliven one a bit! On this hint, the little violin first got excited upon one string, and then upon another, and then the bow rode a hand-gallop over two at once; then saw we four fingers flying as far up the finger-board as they could go, without falling overboard, near the bridge—a dangerous place at all times from the currents and eddies—and there provoking a series of sounds, as if the performer were pinching the tails of a dozen mice, that squeaked and squealed as he made the experiment. The bow (like the funambulist with the soles of his slippers fresh chalked) kept glancing on and off, till we hoped he would be off altogether and break his neck; and now the least harsh and grating of the cords snaps up in the fiddler's face, and a crude one is to be applied; and now—but what is the use of pursuing the description? Let us leave the old bass to snore away his lethargic accompaniment for ten minutes more, and the affair will end. The pianist, the Octavius of the triumvirs, thinks it necessary to excuse Signor ——, telling us, "He has bad violin, he play like one angel on good one"—but hisht, hisht! the evening-star is rising, and we are to be repaid, they say, for all we have gone through! Signor * * * is going to play. The maestro advances with perfect consciousness of his own powers; his gait is lounging, he does not mean to hurry himself, not he—his power of abstraction (from the company) is perfect; he is going to play in solitude before fifty people, and only for his own amusement. He placed himself at least a foot from the piano, his knees touching the board, his body rises perpendicularly from the music-stool, his head turns for a moment to either shoulder as if he were glancing at epaulettes thereon, and then he looks right ahead; he neither has nor needs a book; with the wide-extended fingers of both hands, down he pounces, like a falcon, on the sleeping keys, which, caught by surprise, now speak out and exert all their energies. Those keys, which a few minutes ago vibrated so feebly, and spoke so inarticulately, now pour forth a continuous swell of the richest melody and distinctest utterance. The little wooden parallelograms at first seem to be keeping out of their ranks just to see what is going on, till, the affair becoming warm, they can no longer stand it, but grow excited and take part in the general action. Relying fully on the perfect obedience of his light troops, and relaxing a little from his erect attitude of command, he gently inclines his body to the left, leads his disposable force rapidly upwards in that direction, where, having surprised the post against which they were dispatched, he recovers his swerve, and they retrace with equal precision and rapidity their course from the wings to the centre.
Come, this is playing! This is worth coming to; the instrument seems but the organ of the man's own feelings; its mournful tones are only a paraphrase of his sighs; its brilliant arabesques are but the playful expression of his own delight with every thing and every body! His cheek is warm, his eyes sparkle, his hands detonate thunder and lightnings from the keys, and he concludes as suddenly as he began; the very silence is felt, and the breathless guests, who have watched the fingers and been rapt by the tones, now burst forth simultaneously in expressions of delight and applause.
THE RAILWAYS.
We read, no later than yesterday, two very pungent leading articles in the London daily journals, on the present all-absorbing subject of railway speculation. Both writers are evidently well versed in the details of the novel system; both possess some smattering of political economy, sufficient at least to enable them to form a judgment; and both consistent in their data and statistical information. Yet, agreeing in these points, it is somewhat singular to find that the Coryphæi have arrived at diametrically opposite conclusions. One of them is quite clear, that if the present railway mania (as he calls it) is permitted to go on unchecked for a short time further, the country will not only be on the verge of bankruptcy, but a general crash will be inevitable; that, vast as the resources of Britain undoubtedly are, she cannot, by any exertion short of crippling her staple commercial relations, furnish capital enough for the fulfilment of a moiety of the schemes already announced, and thrown into the public market; that the fact, which is incontestable, that a large proportion of these shares were originally, and are presently, held by parties who have no means of paying up the calls, but who are solely speculating for the rise, must very soon produce a reaction, and that such reaction will be of the absolute nature of a panic. Such are the opinions of this writer, who is clearly of the restrictive school. He holds, that the government is bound, in such a crisis as that which he rather states than prophesies, to interfere at once with an arbitrary order, and to prevent the issue of any new schemes until those already before the public are either disposed of or exhausted.
How this is to be effected, the writer does not sufficiently explain. He points to immediate interference, from which expression we are led to believe he points at some such proceeding as an Order in Council, to be pronounced during the recess of Parliament. If so, we may dismiss this gentleman and his remedy in a very summary manner. Such an Order in Council would be worse than useless, because it would be a manifest breach of the constitution. As well might an Order be issued to close our manufactories, to restrict the amount of any branch of produce, or to prevent parties from forming themselves into companies for the most blameless and legitimate purpose. It is a strange symptom of the credulousness of the age, or rather of the ignorance of the people in all matters relating to the science of government, that, towards the close of September last, some such rumour was actually circulated and believed, though its father was manifestly a bear, and its birthplace the Stock Exchange. But if this merely is meant, that there lies with the Imperial Parliament a controlling and interferential power, and that the great estates of the realm may be called upon to use it, we do not question the proposition. Whether, however, it would be wise to use that power so sweepingly as the journalist recommends, or whether, practically, it could be possible, are very serious considerations indeed.
But the existence of any evil is denied in toto by the other journalist. In the crowded columns of the morning prints, driven to supplement and even extra-supplement by the overwhelming mass of railway advertisements, he can see no topic of alarm, but "matter for high exultation, and almost boundless hope." His belief in superabundance of capital, and its annual enormous increment, is fixed and steadfast. He considers the railways as the most legitimate channel ever yet afforded for the employment of that capital, and the most fortunate in result for the ultimate destinies of the country. He compares—and very aptly too—the essential difference between the nature of the schemes in which the public are now embarking and those which led to the disastrous results of 1825. His sole regret is, that he must regard the present direction of enterprise, "as an opportunity, that is, facility of investment, that from its nature can be but temporary, though the profit of the investment must, from the nature of